Russia: Marx, Lenin, and the Death of an Illusion - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 134

dustrial system incapable of meeting the demands of war, and desperately short of food
and supplies, Nicholas took personal command of his armies, leaving the country in the
hands of the Czarina and her advisors. Military defeat followed military disaster, and Rus-
sia swirled into chaos. Soldiers laid down their arms, surrendered, and deserted. Factory
workers stayed at home, and urban mobs shouted for peace and bread. In St. Petersburg, the
Czar abdicated and might have slipped safely out of the country but for the arrival of Vladi-
mir Lenin. Lenin, living in Switzerland and plotting a workers' revolution in Russia, leaped
at Germany's offer of safe conduct to Russia. He was put in a closed train that thundered
east across Europe, arriving at St. Petersburg's Finland Station in time to overthrow Rus-
sia's new and moderate parliamentary government. In its place now stood Lenin's Bolshev-
ik Party and Red Army ready to crush all opposition, no matter the cost. The Czar's family
was imprisoned, taken to a remote village, Ekaterinburg, and in 1917, the entire family was
executed in the cellar of the house that was their prison, their bodies burned, mutilated, and
secretly buried in a nearby forest. With their death, the Romanov Czars, rulers of Russia
since 1653, came to their bloody end.
Figure 9.5. Vladimir Lenin
WHY CONFLICTING VIEWS OF SOVIET RUSSIA?
Dictatorial regimes are always tempted by the vulgarized version of the Pythagorean
dictum: knowledge is power. And none put it to better use than the Soviet Union. Official